I think you might have provided that link in the ARV thread, because I remember recently trying to read that book, and it was just too damned ponderous to get through. Maybe there’s something of value there – I’ll have to try again when I’m feeling exceptionally patient, and awash in leisure time. There aren’t many days when I feel prepared to completely forget everything that I’ve learned about physics and start from scratch with an entirely new model of reality with a gazillion new concepts inter-related in ways that may, or may not, be valid in a meaningful, self-consistent, and practical manner. My first impression was that it was incredibly woo stuff – but that’s not a final judgment: a proper evaluation of a book like that can take weeks or months, sometimes even years to fully comprehend, manipulate through applications to known physics, and determine whether it has any real merit.
I went through that process with Daniel Fry’s books, for example – and it took a decade to definitively determine that the concepts therein do in fact represent a significant advancement in theoretical physics. And I’m still not done unraveling it all, because the clues are very cleverly hidden in a variety of subtle ways that only become evident as one reaches very advanced levels of understanding in physics, which is an arduous and on-going process. I feel confident, however, that within his books is the key to understanding the underlying principle of gravitational fields – their true fundamental nature and the proper methodology for synthesizing them (both polarities) with attainable magnitudes of energy.
The first part of this section contradicts the second part: relativity doesn’t predict the absorption/emission spectra of atoms. So I don’t know how you’re deriving spectra predictions from relativity. Please explain your methodology explicitly so I can understand what you’re talking about.
Do you teach physics? If so, at what level? None of the physics PhD’s I know take exception to SR and GR as you do; and I’d like to understand that disparity better. Most of the theoretical physicists I study are looking at extensions of relativity, rather than chucking it altogether and starting over. Although once in great while, a refreshing and totally alien model of reality appears in the physics literature, like this one:
“Identification of a Gravitational Arrow of Time,” Julian Barbour, Tim Koslowski, and Flavio Mercati, Physical Review Letters, 2014
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.0917.pdf
Perhaps my advocacy for relativity and quantum field theory gives the wrong impression. Given that these two models have been irreconcilable for roughly a century, I think it’s safe to assume that the next major advancement in theoretical physics will radically transform our understanding of physical reality, similar to the manner in which relativity superseded Newtonian mechanics, and throw open the doors to new technologies well beyond our present capabilities. But note that even in that case, the applicability of Newtonian mechanics in the weak field limit is preserved – it’s sufficiently accurate for modeling the flight trajectories of the Voyager and Pioneer probes, for example.
But the tiny deviations from Newtonian mechanics that were predicted by relativity under conditions proximal to the Earth, required a radical transformation of our fundamental understanding of physical reality.
I expect a similar transformation when we achieve the first unified field theory. But note that this new understanding will require a level of sophistication equal to, or greater than, the tensor calculus of general relativity – because we now know that all of those effects are real, and cannot be described by any simpler mathematical edifice. Likewise, the unified field theory will require a minimum level of sophistication equal to or greater than the Schrödinger wave equation and associated Hamiltonians and so forth of quantum field theory.
That’s why I dismiss all alternative models which fail to reach those levels of mathematical precision and sophistication - we know that these are minimum requirements for describing the physical observations that we’ve made to date.
But we can be certain that both of these physics models are only special cases of a larger encompassing theory that remains undiscovered, so the game is on. The universe originated from a single object that defies our current understanding, where gravitational and quantum fields were unified (and remain fundamentally unified even today) in a way that eludes our present comprehension. We will discover that underlying unifying physical theory, because it exists – the proof is literally all around us.
Making key steps toward that unified field theory is the primary focus of my theoretical physics studies.
So don’t misunderstand me – I’m not a conventional academic thinker. I advocate passionately for general relativity and the established physical theories only because of their astounding and thoroughly verified observational predictions and elegant theoretical frameworks. But I know they’re not the end of the story.
